Re: ocaml without X, how?
On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 01:05:41PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 07:52:56PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 12:12:54PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > > Have you considered that option?
> >
> > No it is not an option.
> >
> > Debian supports many architectures, not all of them supporting the
> > native code compiler.
>
> Where does the native compiler not work, and why? I thought that it
> just generated C code?
The native code compiler is a real compiler and produces true asm code,
and even with more optimization possibilities than C code is able to do,
because we have a stronger typing discipline. The native code compiler
is currently implemented on 6 debian arches, i386, ia64, sparc, arm,
powerpc and alpha. There is a m68k tentative support, but it is not
implemented in these packages. And naturally, as you guessed now, the
problem is that the asm generation is not done on the other arches.
hpux is also support, as well as mips/irix, but not on linux. The m68k
code originates from an old sunos port, but was recently ressurected by
a linux-m68k guy.
> > Also for a software like debmirror, native code may be overkill and an
> > excessive burden to the archive.
>
> I hardly think it would be an "excessive burden"; it surely wouldn't
> been any more of a burden than C++ code, right?
But then, bytecode is arch: all, and a single package can be built on my
fast x86 box, and work on all our arches in quite reasonable speed (like
factor of 3 or so compared to equivalent C code, i think).
Look for the spamoracle package for an excellent prove of that. I build
both the spamoracle native code package on all 6 native code supporting
plateforms, and the spamoracle-byte package which provides spamoracle,
and is binary: all. Quite nice actually, you can install any of them on
native code supporting arches, and the best version will be
automatically installed when installing just plain spamoracle.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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